But In Your Dreams, Whatever They Be
by kototyph
Summary: Five times people passed out on Dean, and one time he returned the favor.
1. Chapter 1

**But in Your Dreams (Whatever They Be)**

Five times people passed out on Dean, and one time he returned the favor.

* * *

><p>1.<p>

"Dee," Sam hiccupps between sobs. "Dee—"

"'S okay, Sammy," Dean whispers into his brother's hair, hand on the back of his shaggy head to keep him still. "It's okay. We just gotta be quiet, okay? Just be real quiet."

"_No_," Sam whimpers, shoving at his chest. Dean realizes belatedly that he's probably crushing him like this, both of them crammed into the footwell of the Impala's back seat.

"Shhh," he hushes him, easing back as much as he dares. "Dad'll be back soon, I promise, and then we can go back to the motel. C'mon, Sammy, please?"

"No!" Sam says again, halfway to a tantrum, and all Dean can do was hold him close and put a hand over his mouth.

Sam kicks and bites and hits him with tiny fists, but that's okay. Sam's a little kid and doesn't understand anything yet, still baby-pudgy and slow. That's why he's Dean's responsibility; Dean, who is eight and has already been on his first hunting trip, who gets to practice with his daddy's .45 and cab already hit a can at fifty feet, who has already salted and burned more ghosts than he can count on his hands. Dean, who knows that when Dad says _Stay in the car_ like that, things have gone bad, really bad, and that his first and most important job is to protect Sammy. Always.

Eventually, Sam's hitching breaths even out and the hands he has fisted in Dean's t-shirt go lax. Dean carefully gathers him up and makes a pillow of his arm, Sam's head resting on his shoulder and his sleeping face turned towards Dean's.

"'S okay, Sammy," he whispers again, wiping the tears and snot away with his sleeve and curling around his brother's small body. "I'll keep you safe."

Always.


	2. Chapter 2

**But in Your Dreams (Whatever They Be)**

Five times people passed out on Dean, and one time he returned the favor.

* * *

><p>2.<p>

"So then I sez to her," Bobby says, swaying forward into Dean's space. "I sez, lady, even if your pants were holy ground and we were surrounded by vampires, I wouldn't be tryin' to get in 'em."

"Bobby Singer," John says very seriously, pointing an accusing finger at him, "you are drunk."

Rufus laughs like that's the funniest thing said by anyone, ever, and Jesus Christ but these old farts can't hold their liquor. Twelve-year-old Sam after his first tequila shot was fucking Rico Suavé compared to their dad and his friends after a six pack.

Fourteen-year-old Sam is sulking around upstairs, banished there following some argument Dean only caught the tail end of. That's fine and dandy, let the kid sulk, but now Dean's the only one picking up empties and unloading shotguns (just in case the Three Drunketeers get it in their heads to go shoot something when they're three sheets to the wind, _again_, Jesus _Christ_), and he could really use someone to exchange exasperated eyerolls with. He's just saying.

There's a game on, college football or pre-season matches or something. Bobby is a diehard Cornhuskers fan and the contrast of the fifty-year-old television and brand spanking new satellite dish never fails to amuse Dean.

"—slaps me! Can you believe it?" Bobby is saying. Yes, Dean believes it.

"Naw, really?" Rufus asks, and Dean rolls his eyes so hard it hurts.

John and Rufus pass out where they are, John slumped over the kitchen table, Rufus sprawled facedown on the horsehair loveseat with the cabbage roses on it, drooling into the fabric. It leaves Dean and Bobby sitting on the pullout sofa; Dean really, truly does not want to share a narrow four-poster with sulky-Sam, so when Bobby starts teetering in place he gets a shoulder under the man's arm and half-leads, half-carries him up the stairs to his own unmade and musty-smelling bed.

While Dean is trying to pry off Bobby's shoes, the man mumbles, "Thankye. Yer a good son," and pats Dean clumsily on the head.

Then, slowly, even majestically, he topples straight backwards like a felled redwood and lands with a bounce. Before Dean can say anything, the old hunter starts snoring, mouth open and loud enough to wake the dead.

"… thanks, Bobby," Dean says quietly, and tiptoes out.


	3. Chapter 3

**But in Your Dreams (Whatever They Be)**

Five times people passed out on Dean, and one time he returned the favor.

* * *

><p>3.<p>

"Dad, stay with me, you just gotta stay with me," Dean pleads, pressing as hard as he dares on the ripped-open flesh of John's side. His father's breath is whistling in and out like a lung's been punctured and Dean hates that he has to hope that that's the least of their problems, that John hasn't been poisoned or infected by the thing Dean emptied his gun into six miles back.

Dean himself hasn't escaped unscathed— blood's dripping into his eyes and running down his arm to join John's in soaking the dirty shirt he's balled up into the wound— but Dean is upright and driving where John is slumped over the passenger's seat, pale as death and coughing up little flecks of red onto the Impala's leather. Dean presses harder and fights to keep his eyes off the blood and on the road.

He has to be doing over a hundred twenty miles an hour, peeling down the highway toward Corona, New Mexico, the last town they'd driven past before leaving the car to hunt something furred and fanged up and down the Manzano Mountains. When Bobby had called them, they'd been in Tulsa, going through the motions of salt-and-burns and trying to ignore the gaping awful hole of a third bed, third plate, third chair gone unused. Sammy's been gone for two months and it's not getting any easier, turning to share a grin with an empty back seat.

"C'mon, Dad," Dean says, more urgently as John's eyes flutter shut again. "_Stay with me_."

He hadn't even seen the thing coming, hadn't even been looking, because right flank was Sammy's position and had been since he was hold enough to take the recoil of a shotgun. Dean took point, John held the middle and Sam kept rear guard, always, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. After eighteen years some things are so ingrained that even if you can stop yourself from automatically adding that prissy summer salad to your otherwise beefy, manly lunch order, you can't stop your instincts. Hunters live by their instincts, and now John Winchester is dying by his.

"D'n," John says thickly, and his head drops to his shoulder with an air of finality that ratchets up Dean's fear to screaming panic.

"Please, please," Dean whispers to the horizon he's driving towards, and doesn't know who he's begging.


	4. Chapter 4

**But in Your Dreams (Whatever They Be)**

Five times people passed out on Dean, and one time he returned the favor.

* * *

><p>4.<p>

The water swirling down the drain is the strangest shade of poisonously vivid orange, and Dean cranks the hot water up another half-turn and shrubs vigorously at the gooey, curdled-looking _stuff _where it's sticking to his skin. They'd ro-sham-boed for first shower rights and Sammy'd won like he always did, leaving Dean standing in the middle of their fleabag motel room covered in drying, congealing monster slugbeast ooze, trying not to drip on anything important. How is this his life?

The water pressure's for shit and it's taking forever to get clean, Dean fighting down the instinctive _Get it off, get it off! _and working methodically down each arm, each leg, torso, his back, his head. He feels a gelatinous clump dislodge from the hair at his temple and practically flings it into the drain, shuddering with disgust.

His brother, that asshat, hasn't left Dean much hot water to work with, so by the time the puddle around the drain is clear Dean's shivering, spray gone from tepid to chill to fucking freezing in five minutes. He slams off the tap and tugs back the curtain, to discover that not only has his brother emptied the hot water tank, he's also made off with the one towel the bathroom boasted.

"Sammy!" he bellows, stepping gingerly out onto the slick yellowed linoleum. "Sa—" He slips and catches himself on the counter, forgetting his strained muscles and sprained fingers until the pain sings like a live wire up his arm. "_Ouch_, fucking_—"_

"_I'm coming, I'm coming,"_ Sam says, muffled and exasperated through the door, and it's pushed open just wide enough for one freakishly long Sasquatch arm to deposit the damp, used towel and the first aid kit on the floor before it swings closed again. Dean glares at the cheap oak panels, massaging his fingers for a moment to try to ease the ache out of them before reaching for the towel.

He rubs the terrycloth roughly over his hair, and glancing up catches sight of his bruised and battered face in the mirror. He looks like he went five rounds with something that had cinderblocks for fists, not a giant radioactive slug.

He also sees the man stagger into being behind him, and turns and catches Castiel just as the angel's eyes roll back in his head and he slumps forward in a dead faint. Dean overbalances, and they both go crashing to the floor.

"OW, godDAMNit—Sam! SAM!"

The door is slammed open and Sam's framed in the doorway, looking down at his very naked brother pinned underneath one very unconscious angel.

"… Should I leave you two alone?" he asks sardonically.

Dean is struggling to get out from under the angel, and Castiel slides down into a boneless heap in Dean's lap. Stubble scraps over his bare stomach, and Dean yelps, "Damnit Sam, help me!"

They end up with Castiel in Dean's bed and Sam saying, "Dude, please, at least put some pants on," and Dean firing back, "Fuck you, my pants are covered in slug slime. And where am I supposed to sleep?"

He ends up in Sam's spare boxers and Sam's bed, sleeping ass to ass with his enormous baby brother while the angel across the room fills the silence with thin, soft snores.

_Seriously_, how is this his life?


	5. Chapter 5

**But in Your Dreams (Whatever They Be)**

Five times people passed out on Dean, and one time he returned the favor.

* * *

><p>5.<p>

"Hey, big guy," Dean says softly, putting a hand on Ben's shoulder. The boy's sitting at the kitchen table, about to nod off onto his math textbook.

He yawns, and turns to blink owlishly up at Dean. "Whuh?"

For a moment he looks so much like Sam that Dean's chest tightens, heart swelling with a bittersweet twinge. His smile is maybe a little more wobbly than a sleepy face really warrants.

He gently shakes the shoulder he has his hand on. "Time to pack it in, Benjamin. We'll work on this in morning, okay?"

Ben responds with another yawn and tired, "Mmmkay, Dean." He climbs to his feet and trudges towards the stairs, rubbing groggily at his eyes.

Lisa is just coming down the stairs, and turns to watch Ben stagger up the treads with a tender frown unique to mothers. "Don't forget to brush your teeth!" she calls after him, and gets a grunt in response.

Dean has taken Ben's crumb-covered plate and half-finished glass of chocolate milk to the sink, and when Lisa wraps her arms around him and stands on tiptoe to prop her chin on his shoulder, he turns to graze a kiss over her cheek.

They end up in the family room with some Academy-Award-winning French movie in the DVD player. After the third topless girl wanders casually across the screen he says, "I could get used to this," and Lisa elbows him in the ribs.

It's a weekend and they both work full time, so by the time the movie ends (one of the topless chicks dies of cancer, her equally topless sister departing for Algeria and, if the subtitles are to be believed, "The sweet shores of oblivion"), Dean's head has come to rest on his hand and Lisa is fast asleep, her head tucked into the crook of his neck.

She stirs a little as he hoists her into his arms, but only to murmur, "My hero," and let her head fall back onto his chest as he navigates around the corner and up the stairs to their bedroom.

He tucks her in, discovers Ben's fallen asleep with the light on and tucks him in too, smoothing the comforter down over his thin shoulders and flicking his nose lightly just to see his face scrunch up.

He checks the doors, windows, vents, chimney. He makes sure the hexbags are where he left them and that his and Dad's and Sam's phones are still charged, with no messages waiting.

Just in case.

He slides the drawer closed and looks briefly out the den's big bay window, into their neighbor's backyard and up at the stars and gleaming opal moon.

" 'Night," he tells it, and goes to bed.


	6. Chapter 6

**But in Your Dreams (Whatever They Be)**

Five times people passed out on Dean, and one time he returned the favor.

* * *

><p>+1.<p>

Sam's loud, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, DEAN," delivered directly into his right ear at 200 decibels, jerks him out of his doze and into the present, which is driving down the highway at two am and seventy miles an hour, about two seconds from plowing into an eighteen-wheeler's back end.

"WHOA SHIT," is his response, and he wrenches the wheel to the side. They miss hitting the semi by inches but shoot straight into oncoming traffic, and Sam's constant stream of "Ohshitohshitohshit" lasts until Dean dodges the last minivan and veers smoothly back into the right lane, hands white-knuckled and heart pounding.

Sam' harshly panted, "_Pull over_, Dean, I swear to God I will kill you if you kill us," is nonsensical but sincerely threatening and Dean obeys, slowing and easing off the asphalt onto the gravel shoulder. They come to a complete stop just as the semi passes them, laying on it's horn with justifiable gusto.

Dean's still fumbling with his seatbelt when Sam wrenches the driver's-side door open, glowering down at him in all his towering Gigantor rage. "Why didn't you say you were getting tired? No, forget it, just get out."

The back door opens and Castiel pokes his head up above the window, hair sticking up in every direction and a reverse pattern of the Impala's leather seat creasing his cheek. "Are we there yet?" he asks, eyes unfairly bright and clear for the time of night.

"We're rotating drivers," Sam answers, shoving Dean out of the way. "Cas, switch spots with me and let Dean have the back?"

The adrenaline from nearly ramming the big rig is fading quickly and Dean's falling asleep where he stands. His eyes blink open as one of their old scratchy army blankets settles around his shoulders, and he mumbles a thank you and stumbles forward towards the back. Castiel's hand on his head is the only reason Dean doesn't bash it on the Impala's frame as he crawls inside.

It's warm and dark, and Dean sighs blissfully as he draws his legs up to his chest and puts an arm under his head, already drifting off again. The car rocks as the doors close—one, two, three—and the driver's seat slides back as Sammy Long-Legs gets comfortable. Probably fucking up his mirrors, too. Bitch.

"Okay, you remember I told you the Impala has a manual transmission?" he dimly hears Sam say to Cas, who murmurs agreement. "Right. You use the stick shift and the clutch pedal to switch from gear to gear—"

The engine purrs to life, and Sam's voice blends with the low roar of the Impala's engine and, as they pull back onto the highway, the road moving under her wheels. It's been Dean's lullaby for most of his life, and he falls asleep with the feeling that—for once, for just this moment, these few hundred miles in the quiet dark—everything is as it should be.

* * *

><p><em>One kind reviewer pointed out that not only does the Impala not have seatbelts, it also has an automatic transmission. Please, continue to suspend disbelief despite these oversights. :)<em>


End file.
